Opinion | The Question Kamala Harris Needs to Answer to Beat Donald Trump

Kamala Harris is at the halfway point between when she officially became the Democratic presidential nominee and Election Day. Her ascent has been remarkable. She is beating Donald Trump in most national polls and is in statistical dead heats in every battleground state.

But she has more work to do. According to a recent New York Times poll, 31 percent of voters expressed the desire to know more about her. To win in 37 days, there is one question she needs to answer: Why? Why do you want to be the president, why are you the right leader for this moment and why does it matter to voters? She has proved her credentials, prosecuted the case against Mr. Trump and clarified some policy views, but not her why. That’s what the American people want to know about her.

It’s a fundamental question — and one that stumps too many political candidates.

How she answers will determine whether she can convince those undecided voters and drive record turnout among Democratic base voters. My suggestion for the vice president: Go big and take more calculated risks.

First, cut back on the incessant focus on Mr. Trump. By now, almost everyone who could be persuaded by the case against him has heard it.

Second, trade the massive rallies for smaller, town-hall-style events in battleground states. While rallies are meant to entertain, town halls create the conditions for Ms. Harris to dig into her why and directly address voters, without the pressure for applause lines.

The town hall format plays to Ms. Harris’s strengths. I served as Ms. Harris’s communications director in her early days in the White House, and the leader I witnessed in those late-night meetings in the West Wing was compassionate, funny and warm. She sees people and has a heart for their circumstances, hopes and dreams. Those qualities are what make her the right leader for this moment and are her greatest contrast points with Mr. Trump. The intimate setting of a town hall will expose voters to those qualities and add more dimensions to what already excites them about her.

Ms. Harris is a natural storyteller. I can’t recall a meeting with her when she wasn’t telling a story to punctuate her point, whether it was a lesson learned from her mother or the struggle of a single mom she met in Pennsylvania. In a town hall, Ms. Harris can tell the story of her worldview, how the vice presidency has sharpened her decision-making and what her vision for the nation — including her “opportunity economy” — would mean for voters in terms they can understand.

Town halls are a riskier format — and the campaign knows that. But Ms. Harris’s town halls set viewing records when she ran for president in 2019.

Third, she should launch the party’s first large-scale paid social-media influencer campaign. Democrats continue to lag behind Republicans who run paid influencer campaigns year-round. Ms. Harris has the resource advantage, having raised a record of more than $550 million, to create a new Democratic playbook for online organizing that could operate beyond the election cycle.

Modeled after Democrats’ formidable ground operation, the campaign should feature diverse representatives, ranging from celebrities to micro-influencers and across socioeconomic, generational, cultural and ethnic backgrounds. It should target persuadable and base voters in battleground states, focusing on profiling Ms. Harris, disseminating positive messaging about her record and driving voters to the polls. This strategy would be groundbreaking at combating mis- and disinformation in real time, which plagued Joe Biden in 2020 and that research shows disproportionately targets Democratic constituencies.

The party has shown some signs of modernizing, but it needs to accelerate its efforts to win the messaging battle. Two hundred digital influencers were invited to cover the Democratic convention in August, and their content brought in more than 350 million views. Traditional media — and to some degree broadcast advertising — cannot replicate that reach, nor the precision to target key voters where they are, in their own language and on the issues they care about. Given that an overwhelming majority of Americans say they get news from smartphones, computers or tablets, the environment is ripe. Ms. Harris should use her vast resources to bring this approach to scale.

And finally, Ms. Harris needs to do more interviews to close voters’ knowledge gap about her. From my experience working with Ms. Harris, I know that national media organizations often have a set narrative they want to perpetuate about her and a penchant for revisiting her past missteps. Couple that with a fixation on the news of the day and the infrequency of her interviews, and voters are left with unanswered questions about her.

I suggest bypassing traditional, national media outlets and instead prioritizing interviews with local media in battleground states; with popular digital platforms; and with specialty, niche media that appeal to key demographics she needs to shore up, such as the dozens of podcasts targeted to suburban mothers and Black men.

If all politics is local, then Ms. Harris should be in closer community with voters. More interviews with local and specialty media would give her the opportunity to create intimacy with voters by telling them where she stands on issues that are specific to their lives. What does a voter in Wisconsin care about fracking in Pennsylvania? The hardworking people of Milwaukee want to hear how she plans to tackle the city’s skyrocketing rent prices.

Donald Trump is clearly vulnerable: The polls suggest that he has hit a ceiling with voters, who aren’t clamoring for another season of the Trump show.

But to beat Mr. Trump, the vice president doesn’t need to give the American people a reason to vote against the former president, but rather a reason to vote for the next one.

Ashley Etienne is a communications strategist currently serving as a senior adviser at Weber Shandwick. She was the communications director for Vice President Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a special assistant to President Barack Obama.

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